Lavengro in Spain

21st-century Hitler / El Hitler del siglo XXI

My following of the British media, while not exactly cursory, is of necessity limited. Nevertheless, I have found no reference to this, which I picked up here and have also found mentioned in the German press: President Ahmadinejad of Iran has sent a ten-page letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel; Berlin has not made the contents public beyond saying that it is 'obscene' and suggests that Germany might like to join him in his liquidation of Israel and Judaism. He has not yet received, and never will receive, an answer to it.

En su columna en El País (aquí) de ayer, Hermann Tertsch nos informa de que:

La canciller alemana Angela Merkel no va a contestar a una carta que ha recibido del presidente iraní Mahmud Ahmadineyad. La cancillería ha hecho saber que, una vez traducida y valorada, concluye que el esfuerzo epistolar de 10 folios no merece respuesta más allá de la expresión de repugnancia y rechazo. Tan detestable es el contenido que Berlín no lo hará público. Sí se ha hecho saber, sin embargo, que es absolutamente obscena por estar llena de acusaciones e insinuaciones antijudías y antiisraelíes y llega hasta el extremo de pedir la cooperación entre los iraníes y los alemanes para lograr juntos la liquidación de Israel y del judaísmo al que acusa de todos los males mundiales.

Love and mental illness

Perhaps it is no surprise that this comes from Italy:

Alteration of the platelet serotonin
transporter in romantic love
by
Marazziti D, Akiskal HS, Rossi A, Cassano GB
Dipartmento di Psichiatria,
Neurobiologia, Farmacologia e Biotecnologie,
University of Pisa, Italy.
     Psychol Med 1999 May; 29(3):741-5

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The evolutionary consequences of love are so important that there must be some long-established biological process regulating it. Recent findings suggest that the serotonin (5-HT) transporter might be linked to both neuroticism and sexual behaviour as well as to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The similarities between an overvalued idea, such as that typical of subjects in the early phase of a love relationship, and obsession, prompted us to explore the possibility that the two conditions might share alterations at the level of the 5-HT transporter. METHODS: Twenty subjects who had recently (within the previous 6 months) fallen in love, 20 unmedicated OCD patients and 20 normal controls, were included in the study. The 5-HT transporter was evaluated with the specific binding of 3H-paroxetine (3H-Par) to platelet membranes. RESULTS: The results showed that the density of 3H-Par binding sites was significantly lower in subjects who had recently fallen in love and in OCD patients than in controls. DISCUSSION: The main finding of the present study is that subjects who were in the early romantic phase of a love relationship were not different from OCD patients in terms of the density of the platelet 5-HT transporter, which proved to be significantly lower than in the normal controls. This would suggest common neurochemical changes involving the 5-HT system, linked to psychological dimensions shared by the two conditions, perhaps at an ideational level.

But then, as Sigmund Freud said: You are always insane when you are in love.

British media

In an article in yesterday’s Guardian (here) Rob Smyth, writing about the punishment of Materazzi for provoking Zidane, bemoans the “sanitation” of football, where “verbal provocation … has hitherto been perceived as part and parcel of a man's game.” Leaving aside the question of what the Guardian’s feminists will make of that, what really caught my eye was this remarkable mixture of metaphors, bad grammar, and other nonsense:

In punishing Materazzi so strictly for the mundane sporting offence of "insulting" comments, Fifa has defenestrated norms and mores that have been part of football's fabric since time immemorial. And in doing so, they would appear to have opened a (sic) Pandora's Box: is sledging now banned? If not, what did Materazzi say that was so insulting as to demand punishment? Where is the line drawn? How can a line be drawn in an area that intrinsically produces the greyest shades?

The answer to that final question is of course: By using a pencil that is any colour but grey.

And while I am on the subject of the media, is it really appropriate for the BBC to report on Stephen Fry’s attempted suicide and associated mental illness on its entertainment page (here)?

Impunity in London

This leading article appeared today in El País (here).

 

Impunity in London

 EL PAÍS - Opinion - 19-07-2006

One year after the London police killed a young Brazilian in error in the Underground when they mistook him for a terrorist (if it can be said to be killing in error after a man has been followed for a long time by one of the best-trained forces in the world and is finished off by firing seven shots at point-blank range), the prosecution has concluded that nobody will be tried for the death of the electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes. There is no evidence to accuse any member of the police with murder, or even with homicide. 

The archiving of the case by British justice is unacceptable from any point of view, even though the event took place in the circumstances of extreme tension that London was living in a year ago. In the death of Menezes (on 22 July, the day after a triple attack in the Underground failed because of the failure of the explosives and two weeks after the terrorist massacre perpetrated by British Muslim fanatics that left 52 dead and 700 injured) there was a series of blunders and confusion from the police. But the prosecution has decided, to the general applause of the political class, that the police of the British capital will only face administrative charges which will presumably end in a fine for breaching the health and safety legislation in its provisions about protection of the citizens. 

Hardly anything went right in the police assessment of the situation and its chain of command. From mistaking Menezes for one of the terrorists who had failed in an attack in the Underground the evening before, and who lived in the same building, to the presumption, because of his “bulky” clothing, that he was carrying explosives. There was also, according to the police officers involved, an alleged resistance to authority before he was riddled with bullets, motionless, with shots to the head, even though the head of the antiterrorist unit denies that she had given her men the order to kill the Brazilian whom they had tragically mistaken. The head of one of the most renowned police forces in the world, Ian Blair, maintained for two days afterwards that Menezes was a suicide terrorist. 

When such a string of nonsensical acts ends in the despicable death of an innocent man and the events take place in a country that is considered as a beacon of democratic liberties, people among the security forces or among the politicians with authority over them must be called to account. This has not been the case. Apart from the acquittal without trial decided on Monday by the prosecutor, no police officer has resigned in London over the death of Menezes, nor has any member of Tony Blair’s Labour Government. The stupor of the family of the young Brazilian is understandable.
 

Meanwhile, today’s Süddeutsche Zeitung has a 900-word article entitled Barons for a bundle of cash (here). 

So much for Blairs’ (sic) Britain and its image in the world.

Anti-German prejudice

I have already mentioned the peculiar anti-German prejudice that exists in Britain. When I was writing my message the other day about the non-existent prostitute influx into Germany I found myself reading the Wikipedia article on the song Ten German Bombers, which British football fans like to sing as a way of insulting Germans. There is a reference to a journalist on the Daily Mirror called Tony Parsons, who started an article on 12 December 2005 with the words:

WHEN will we be able to listen to the stirring sound of the German national anthem, Deutschland Uber [sic] Alles, in respectful silence?

The current estimate is some unspecified date between the World Cup 2006 and when hell freezes over.

If I were as ignorant about a subject as he is (and there are many subjects about which my ignorance is profound), I would keep quiet about it. The verse of the Deutschlandlied that he quotes is never sung nowadays; instead, the anthem of the German Federal Republic is the verse that begins Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit (Unity, justice and freedom).

 

But now Parsons is quoted as saying:

I was brought up to hate Germany and everything in it but for the first time in my life I find myself changing my mind, because the Germany we loathed with such passion no longer exists.

He’s noticed! Sixty-one years after it happened he has noticed! With all that business about two World Wars and one World Cup, you might have thought that even the most brainless English football supporter might have worked out that the purpose, successfully achieved, of that Second World War was precisely to destroy that hateful Germany. But no. Only now does he notice that the Germany that he claims to have loathed passionately no longer exists. The fact is that it ceased to exist ten years before he was born.

Are tabloid journalists born that stupid or do they have special training courses?

What Materazzi said

Materazzi said sometning to Zidane that made the latter head-butt him near the end of the World Cup final. It must have been something serious, but what was it? The British media have been employing lip-readers to find out – and for the practicality of the operation they might just as well have been employing a gypsy with a crystal ball, or a phrenologist to analyse the shape of Materazzi’s head. Lip-reading just isn’t that precise.

The alleged result of this was the discovery that it was a racial insult and/or that it had something to do with terrorism. These are preoccupations that sell lots of newspapers when they are on the front page, and that allow race-relations pundits to get lots of air time telling FIFA what to do, but they are not the kind of insult that naturally occurs to a crude, thuggish Italian football player. We now know (as far, probably, as we will ever know anything) that Materazzi insulted the female members of Zidane’s family – and that is far more plausible in the circumstances, not only as an insult in itself but as one that would provoke such a Mediterranean reaction. But how many people, I wonder, will miss this point and will know that race and terrorism were at the root of it?

Sherlock Holmes was quite right when he said in A Scandal in Bohemia:

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

The problem is that some people have an interest in twisting facts to suit theories, when those theories suit their interests and they have the media resources to make those theories believed.

Forty thousand prostitutes

Forget those ten German bombers, what about the 40,000 prostitutes who, we were informed (here and here), were to be trafficked into Germany as sex slaves for the World Cup? They turned out in the end to be just as real as those Polish plumbers. Last week El País sent its reporter round a few brothels in Germany to find out how business was doing; the answer was – not very well at all, a fact that is confirmed by the police. One Colombian woman is reported as saying ‘We thought it was going to be different. The men only want football and beer. This is a catastrophe.’ She had decorated her room with a German flag and football motifs; the room in a legal brothel costs her 135 euros a day. Women from other countries have been arriving and going back home again when they found out what things were like.

Another comment: ‘A lot of the Englishmen just come to snoop around, they don’t want any service and really they just get in the way of the business.’

Spain is different

This summer two members of the Spanish air force will marry each other in Seville. They will marry in uniform. They are both men. Since gay marriage was legalised a year ago there have been 4,500 such ceremonies performed, including one between two PP (Conservative) councillors in Galicia. If you don’t know much about Galicia, think of the south or west of Ireland. There have also been a handful of applications for gay divorces, including one for a couple who have been living together since 1993. (A gay divorcé should not be confused with The Gay Divorcée which was based on a musical play called Gay Divorce.) 

A new Spanish law will require all companies to have at least 40% women in their boards of directors within eight years, and this will also apply to the governing bodies of the universities. For the next parliamentary elections the parties will have to have at least 40% of each sex in their lists. The present lower house has about 35% women. The Government (British cabinet) is evenly divided. The new law will also require men to do their fair share of housework, but just how that will be enforced is anybody's guess. Just like the duty under the new Catalan Statute for citizens to speak Catalan - the idea of Catalan policemen stopping people on the street and requiring them to conjugate irregular verbs is laughable. 

Some things never change though. A nine-year-old girl in Jaén, Andalusia, was preparing for her first communion and was naturally very excited about this. As she has coeliac disease her parents told the priest that she could not have a wheat communion wafer. The priest replied that it was not possible to use anything else as ‘it is a direct connection with the Last Supper,’ (though this is official Church policy, maize wafers are used in some parts of Central America, where wheat is not readily available). An alternative was available: it seems that communion is just as real if taken as wine from a chalice – but it has to be wine, not grape juice, for the same reason. So this girl was set aside from all the other communicants, drinking wine while the rest ate wafers, and found it rather difficult to understand why she couldn’t be like everyone else. 

Another thing that never changes is that the summer holidays have arrived and the Iberia pilots have gone on strike. They are not a group who engender any public sympathy. They work few hours even by the normal standards of the industry (and yes, I do know that pilots’ working hours are rightly limited for safety reasons), their divorced spouses enjoy lifelong free travel and other perks, and they earn around 150,000 euros a year on average. Now they are concerned about the rise of cheap airlines, including one set up by Iberia, so they came up with this interesting claim: that the company should produce a bank guarantee for their salaries until they reach the age of 65, this guarantee to be backed by the company’s planes. And if you think that the idea that a company should mortgage its current assets to ensure future salary payments could only be dreamt up by people who are out of touch with the ground, they were also trying to involve the government ministry that manages nationalised industries – having apparently not noticed that Iberia is now fully privatised and 100% owned by private capital! Iberia threatened to go to court to have the strike declared illegal and the pilots called it off this morning, but not before several hundred flights had been cancelled and damage had been done to the company’s profits and reputation (already very low in Spain).

Acts of God and Man

The metro crash last week in Valencia was caused by speed; the train was going flat out from the time it left the previous station, at 80 kph and passing a 40 kph speed limit sign, and with the dead man’s lever certainly having been activated once during that run. The driver was killed, so the actual cause will probably never be known. Line 1 in Valencia is the only one on the system and one of the very few in Spain that does not have automatic braking if speed exceeds a certain level, and the other control system was not applied on that section of that line. Many complaints had been made about the state of the line but the Valencian Government insists that speed was the only factor, and for that the driver was responsible. There is the usual argument about whether there should be a parliamentary enquiry in Valencia.

 At the funeral service the Archbishop of Valencia wondered how God could tolerate such a thing. But is it not for the priests to answer that question rather than ask it? Moreover, his comment very clearly echoes Benedict XVI asking during his not very successful visit to Auschwitz ‘Where was God?’ The really pertinent question in that place should surely have been ‘Where was the Church?’ The Vatican will shortly open its archives for the thirties. I wonder when the wartime papers will be available.

The Pope visited Valencia the other day, just after the train crash, and quite noticeably failed to back the extreme position of the Spanish bishops in their criticism of the government and especially of Zapatero, who failed to attend the mass. There is no particular reason for him to do so, and the bishops' comparison of him with the dictators Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Wojciech Jaruzelsky (who also failed to attend papal masses) was not exactly helpful. Meanwhile, Joaquín Navarro-Valls, the Spanish Opus Dei member who has been the Vatican’s press secretary for 22 years, and was a trusted lieutenant of John Paul II, has retired and is to be succeeded by an Italian Jesuit. This presumably implies a weakening of Opus’s power in the Church, which is no bad thing.